


rewrite the past

by avengersincamphalfbloodstardis



Category: Marvel
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bedtime Stories, Father-Daughter Relationship, M/M, POV Steve Rogers, Parent Steve Rogers, Parent Tony Stark, Parenthood, Remix, Storytelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-25
Updated: 2020-02-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:47:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22443553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avengersincamphalfbloodstardis/pseuds/avengersincamphalfbloodstardis
Summary: Steve can still feel the ice sometimes; his daughter chases it away.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 4
Kudos: 58
Collections: 2020 Captain America/Iron Man Relay Remix





	rewrite the past

**Author's Note:**

> I had the honor of remixing a very lovely work! I hope I did it justice:)

It happens when they’re home from the hospital, when Sarah is just a bundle, tiny and rosy-fingered. Tony is holding her and cooing at her softly, sweet murmurs of her name and proclamations of love. Steve watches, his own heart beating out a new name along with the one that it had beat for eight years now. 

_Sar-ah. To-ny. Sar-ah. To-ny._

_Ba-bump. Ba-bump. Ba-bump._

That’s when the cold washes over him, when he realizes he has something more to lose, something more to leave behind if he goes back under the ice ever again.

It consumes him, floods his bloodstream, the ice water, trying to take the beats out of his chest, the names out of his heart.

How will they ever explain to her, their daughter, what has happened to them? Why she won’t ever be able to play too roughly with them in the water, for fear of them remembering their trauma in it? Why she will have to have a bodyguard until she’s old enough to decide for herself, for fear a villain might harm her? Why an alarm sounds and her daddies rush off to fight, risking the chance that they might not come back?

And then Tony looks up at him, eyes warm and bright and happy, and Steve feels that warmth battle the cold, forcing it to retreat.

He smiles back and moves to his husband and daughter, arms wrapping around them both, protecting them from everything outside their little cocoon, as they protect him from the cold.

He doesn’t mean to let Tony answer the questions that Sarah asks when she’s older; it’s just, when she does ask, he feels the ice again, the dread that one day she might know the horrors they have known.

Tony just knows what to say, to make his answers into fairytales instead of nightmares. He makes their most terrifying monsters into easily slain dragons and hands Sarah the sword to do it.

Steve listens as Tony spins his own straw past into gold, telling Sarah the story of the day Steve plunged into the Atlantic. It doesn’t strike him as a particularly pleasant bedtime story, but Sarah sits in Tony’s lap with an enraptured gaze, eyes, so like Steve’s, wide and unblinking.

He has a sudden vision of the same scene, Sarah not four but fourteen, across the kitchen table instead of in one of their laps. Her eyes still wide, but hurt now, hearing the true story for what it is—something that wounded her father, something that made everything she had in the world possible, but something that cost her father a price. The ice will consume him then—will it take her too?

And then, just as Steve expects the ice to begin it’s deadly creep, Sarah pipes up with her own addition to the story, something Steve had not expected. The mere sound of her voice gives the cold pause, almost as if it could think, as if it was confused.

Tony accepts the addition easily, braiding it into his oral history like it had always been there. 

“That’s not what happened,” Steve blurts without meaning to, the cold still at the edge, held at bay by his family, but maybe not for long.

Both his husband and his daughter look to him.

“Fairytales aren’t real, Papa,” Sarah says with the utmost sincerity. She blinks, once, twice, holding his gaze.

And Steve realizes that his vision won’t ever come to pass. There will never be a moment where Sarah as a young woman angrily accuses them of gilding their pasts, of drawing a curtain over the tough subjects. She knows what the truth looks like. And just like her daddy, she knows that sometimes you can change it, just for a minute. Just to make the world kinder to you. 

And if—when—the ice returns, you keep fighting it, moving forward. And the ones you love make it better with you, helping you, holding you, loving you.

Steve nods in acquiescence and Sarah goes back to her fairytale, a fable of sea creatures and frozen princes, promises sealed with a kiss.

The story continues, lulling the room into a warm glow, nearing drawing Steve into the doze that is calling to his daughter. Sarah falls into a deep sleep with ease, her tiny body cradled back by Tony and tucked in by Steve. They each kiss her forehead and whisper their wishes of sweet dreams before leaving her to her night light and fantasies of mermen and the heroes they rescue.

Steve’s quiet footsteps follow Tony’s as they creep down the hall to their own bedroom, their fingers lacing as Tony closes the door behind them.

He lets himself fall back against the door as Tony stood on tiptoe to kiss him softly. For a moment, he expects the ice again, come to take him away from his love. But still it does not steal him away. And so he just kisses back, wrapping his arms around Tony’s waist.

“You tell quite the adventure,” he murmurs with a soft smile when they part.

Tony smiles back at him, dazzling and lovely. “You’ll have to tell the next one while I listen. Maybe how Iron Man came to be, since I told Captain America’s tale. I’d like to hear what you come up with.”

Steve considers this for a brief moment.

“Deal,” he allows, stroking a thumb over the base of Tony’s spine. “If you help me with the plot when I need it.”

“Of course,” Tony agrees, and kisses him once more.

There was nothing better than this, the life that Steve has built, with Tony building beside him, bringing Sarah into their world. Nothing he wouldn’t face to keep this safe, even another nosedive into the Atlantic. For if he survived the first time, what would stop Tony, and now Sarah, from finding him, no matter where he went?

The ice isn’t gone forever, Steve knows this. That’s not how the mind works, when it’s gone through something terrible. But for now, he can rewrite the past, and kiss his husband.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments and kudos are always appreciated<3


End file.
